The dancing woman caresses her breasts about three inches from my face. I've paid this woman to dance for me, and now I don't know where to look. For £12, she drops her knickers, and kicks them off her three-inch translucent heels.

Following the Queen's speech today, the government will announce plans to clamp down on transactions such as these by tightening the licensing laws for lap dancing clubs. I've come here to try to figure out whether I think that's a good idea. It's difficult; as a feminist, I want to see these institutions shrink, but as a liberal, I question whether it's legitimate to force them to do so.

"You thinking about working here?" my dancer asks me as she clumsily pulls up her panties. I nod my head. She tells me that the conditions aren't as good as I might expect. It's safe, but the dancers have to pay £20 just to get into the club, and the first £100 they earn goes to the owners. On a good night, you can make between £250 and £350 – on a bad night, you might walk away with £70 from a shift that lasts from 8pm to 4am. Because the women are effectively working freelance, the competition with other dancers can be hostile and intense.

Everyone agrees that women should not be made to dance for their passports, or under threat of violence, but what about those women who say they dance by choice? The woman who danced for me said she was there of her own free will, but when I pushed a bit further, I discovered that she "owed a man a lot of money", and had to pay it back quickly. She was from Hungary, and found it difficult to find another job that would meet the debt.

Choice is an ambiguous issue. Do you choose to lap dance if you have a drug habit to feed? Are you working of your own free will if you don't have the qualifications to get another job, or lack the self-esteem to try? These are the questions the liberal proponents of lapdancers' "right to choose" have yet to answer.

Of course, there are those that believe that even if the dancer's choice is a genuinely legitimate one, their profession should be restricted. Campaigning organisations like Object and the Fawcett Society have been arguing for years that lap dancing should be constrained because it normalises the belief that treating women as sexual objects is not only legitimate, but entertaining. With growth in lap dancing clubs doubling since 2004 (there are now more than 300 in the UK), they argue that communities should be given more say over the sexual industries that operate in their neighbourhoods.

They may be right, but feminists who hold this position should not underestimate the significance of what they are asking for. If they have their way, they will restrict the rights of consenting adults to make private transactions about their own bodies. And not every dancer will agree that this is a fair thing to do.

It felt good to leave the club. It was seedy and claustrophobic. But my mind was still not made up: liberals seem to give too much weight to the choice of these dancers, and feminists too little.

There is, however, perhaps one point that the two can agree on: the need to give lap dancers alternatives. Clamping down on licensing laws is not enough to protect the women in these clubs or the communities outside. Without genuine and accessible alternatives to careers in the sex industry, women like the one I paid will go on dancing, whether they want to or not.